The internet has enjoyed tremendous growth over recent years. As a result, vast quantities of information are readily available to millions of users. Among the vast content available on the internet are technical papers, which are of interest to a large number of people, but may be written for a technical audience and assume a baseline understanding of terms used in the particular field. Since now, more than ever, this assumption is not necessarily true, the importance of on-line dictionaries of technical terms is of growing importance.
On-line dictionaries of technical terms have been difficult to build and are often lacking in completeness. For example, technical dictionaries such as the Online Medical Dictionary (OMD, http://www.graylab.ac.uk/omd/index.html), are often missing common terms which are assumed to be understood by those practicing in the particular field. In addition, the definitions in such dictionaries are often too technical for use by a lay person. Accordingly, it would be desirable to automatically generate on-line glossaries of technical terms that are comprehensive and generally useful to the technically oriented user as well as the lay person.